EA: 40% of games sales are now digital downloads

EA, one of the heavyweights in the game publishing industry, made an interesting note earlier today, saying that they estimate that 40% of games today are bought as digital downloads. Which is of no surprise, as digital downloads have steadily risen of the past years, so much that Valve is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales on Steam.

EA also noted that retail outfits are becoming less and less relevant, even going as far as saying NPD sales figures are irrelevant as well, since they don’t include sales of digital copies (neither Steam nor EA Store nor any other digital game distributor releases their sales numbers). EA predicts that digital will overtake retail in 2011.